A few years earlier he had refused to accompany his friend Tullus to Athens and Asia (i. 6).
Nothing is known of the subsequent life of Propertius, but from two passages in the younger Pliny it is natural to infer that he married, in obedience to the Lex Iulia of B.C. 18, and had issue. Pliny, Ep. vi. 15, ‘Passennus Paullus ... inter maiores suos Propertium numerat’; ix. 22, ‘Propertium ... a quo genus ducit.’
We cannot tell even when he died. He must have been alive in B.C. 16, because iv. 6 was written for the ludi quinquennales, which were held for the first time in that year; and iv. 11. 65, is an allusion to the consulship of P. Cornelius Scipio, also in B.C. 16.
In personal appearance Propertius was pale and thin, and rather fond of dress; i. 5, 21,
‘Nec iam pallorem totiens mirabere nostrum,
aut cur sim toto corpore nullus ego’;
ii. 4, 5,
‘Nequiquam perfusa meis unguenta capillis,
ibat et expenso planta morata gradu.’
He had been introduced to Maecenas after the publication of his first Book, but naturally was not on such intimate terms with him as older men like Virgil and Horace were. ii. 1 and iii. 9 are addressed to Maecenas. In the first of these poems Propertius declares that he is unequal to the composition of an epic, which his patron had urged upon him, but adds (l. 17)
‘Quod mihi si tantum, Maecenas, fata dedissent
ut possem heroas ducere in arma manus, ...
bellaque resque tui memorarem Caesaris, et tu
Caesare sub magno cura secunda fores.’
For poems referring to Augustus cf. ii. 10, iv. 6 (on Actium), iii. 18 (on the death of Marcellus).